Has Jeremy Paxman made the most sensational Van Gogh documentary ever?

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Writing about art TV involves a succession of compromises. In order to justify their place in a busy TV schedule and draw a wide audience, documentaries increasingly hinge around the sensational crowd-pleasers of biography. As an art lover you’re desperate for something which sees past the bold clichés; as a journalist you collude, supplying the bold headline yourself.

And there are few examples of sensational biography that both eclipse and rightfully promote an artist in the way Vincent van Gogh’s story does. ‘What is unusual about him [for an artist] is the extent to which his personal story is tied up in our appreciation of his paintings,’ says Jeremy Paxman in BBC Two’s The Mystery of Van Gogh’s Ear.

Too right. And it didn’t even require the artist’s whole ear to make his story what it is, we are told. Painter Paul Signac, Van Gogh’s contemporary, claimed the artist only cut off the lobe, and most experts have trusted him as a source over the local papers of Arles, Provence, which originally reported the story. Is it a ‘minor event that has been sexed up over time?’ asks Paxman, putting much of this down to the ‘tabloid sensationalism’ of the day. ‘Vincent’s life is as famous as his work,’ he says. ‘For once, the word icon is the right one’

The icon status has lead to a rise in so-called ‘amateur historians’ feeling a personal connection with the artist and testing their own hunches, Van Gogh Museum senior researcher Louis van Tilborgh tells us. One of these is Bernadette Murphy, who found herself ‘underwhelmed’ by the idea that such a small piece of ear could be all there was to it, and has spent seven years chasing the missing lobe through medical records and civil ledgers.

The story so far: Van Gogh, Paxman declaims sceptically as he walks through sunflowers, was solitary, intense, had a low attention span, severe manic depression, kept low company and was almost impossible to be around. One is shocked, then, that the idea of being an artist occurred to him so late in life. It took Theo van Gogh to suggest to his older brother that he might give painting a go. Even being mired in art as a dealer (a career he failed in, like many others) hadn’t given him the art bug. Thank you Theo, for this, and for supporting him through the rest. So begins the roll call of bloody disappointments, misunderstood masterpieces and fruitless sexual obsessions.

Yet 1888 in Arles was actually one of the better years for Vincent, we discover. He was away from big cities, going to bullfights, doing the tourist thing. He was also producing his best work and his brother was supporting him, along with a commune of artist friends including Paul Gauguin, in what came to be known as the Yellow House.

There follows a CSI Art attempt to track the night Van Gogh cut his ear off in real time. Interactive text boxes pop up, marking the distance from the Yellow House to the rue du Bout D’Arles, where he was last seen before the ear-cutting. Cue ominous, urgent music, which lapses as we find Paxman and Murphy safely back in the library, where they track the recipient of the ear: in some accounts she is called ‘Rachel’, in others, ‘Gaby’. It falls to Murphy to meet the descendants of the woman, now known to be Gabrielle Berlatier, and tactfully ask them whether their great grandma was a prostitute. Naturally the meeting wasn’t filmed, and they asked not to be shown. What were you expecting? Paxman meeting a family of bearded redheads with straw hats? It would make a great episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

But the main revelation comes via Irving Stone, who wrote the novel that was later adapted into the Van Gogh film Lust for Life (1956). Murphy follows a lead to a before-and-after drawing of the ear injury by Dr Felix Rey (immortalised in the Portrait of Dr Rey, 1889), tucked away in Stone’s Berkeley archive. It turns out Van Gogh went the whole hog, and lopped off the entire ear.

It’s rare pretty rare that an amateur settles such an art mystery. Sensational, even – worthy of the artist’s myth. It is perhaps just as noteworthy how this documentary, which engages with how ‘tabloid sensationalism’ distorts art history, runs on bold claims. The ear incident is described as the most famous event in modern art. Perhaps it is. The Yellow House is described as ‘the most famous artist’s studio of all time’. Really? What about Andy Warhol’s Factory? What about Rembrandt’s house, or Monet’s garden at Giverny? Both of the above exist today as museums and shrines. The Yellow House was knocked down years ago. Paxman even comes out with things like: ‘So what turned this optimistic dreamer into a mental patient, capable of self-harm?’ Sometimes it seems as if the script was written for another TV presenter called Jeremy…

Saying that, the show’s discoveries give us a sensation which disproves general expert consensus. Staff at the Van Gogh Museum accepted Murphy’s findings and have included the ear document in their new exhibition, ‘On the Verge of Insanity’. Paxman called it ‘unprecedented for an amateur researcher.’ This, it seems, can be accepted without hyperbole.

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3 comments

I apologize for my bad English, but here count the facts.I am an italian scholar, Van Gogh specialist oeuvre.In May 1998 .The Independent make me an article on Sunday.On 2 March this year one article by Michael Day, correspondent by Rome of The Independent,on my discovery of the only photos of Van Gogh adult, has been around the world.I have read carefully the findings of Bernadette Murphy Gabrielle Berlatier, aka Rachel, and I also found out that she is the petite provençale, portrayed by Vincent in July 1888 as Mousme ‘, on the same days in which he talks to Theo of rabid dogs and the people admitted to the Institute Pasteur.I have discovered however, in contrast with what mrs.Murphy says, that the mother of Gabrielle was maid and worked for Vincent also for the beginning of July 1888 to February 4, 1889, in the yellow house for 20 francs at month.Gabrielle instead worked in the brothel rue du bout of Arles, but perhaps as a prostitute and not as maid.It is an exposed an anonymous visitor to the central Commissioner Joseph d’Ornano, of 7 November 1888, which warns that the mistress Virginie Chabaud, called Tarasconnaise, illegally prostituting a 16 year old “petite provençale”, perilous with venereal diseases (the document is still in the police archives) .The loyal relationship of Gabrielle and her mother with Vincent, must have been complicated after October 23, 1888, with the arrival of Gauguin in Arles, also notoriously unscrupulous in dealing with minor women.Here can be born disagreements and jealousies that have resulted in the ear cutting tragedy, December 23, 1888.

Have just watched this documentary, which struck me as exceedingly silly. Some basic questions:

1) If ‘Rachel’ AKA ‘Gaby’ was not a prostitute, why should she need a ‘nom-de-guerre’, and why that one? (‘Rachel’ is the name of the French tragedian and celebrated beauty Rachel Felix, d. 1850s. It was adopted as a generic name for cosmetic face powder in a cream shade, and various shades of ‘rachel’ powder were in production into the 1950s and beyond. Glamour, exoticism: taking that name is a bit like calling yourself “Marilyn”.)

2) How naive to suppose that because Rachel/Gaby was only 18, therefore underage, she could not have been working as a prostitute…

3) The Irving Stone archive/Rey drawing of the ear is evidence of a kind but proof of very little. Maybe my own ears are peculiar, but it seems to me it would be very hard to carve through the tough cartilage of one’s ear and leave behind the lobe. Signac’s testimony relevant here.

4) Why do 1-3 remotely matter anyway? Pollock and Orton advanced the manic depression hypothesis back in the late 1970s based on very careful art-historical research, and argued (if my memory serves me correctly) that VG’s most productive episodes coincided with his periods of relative mental stability – i.e. that his mental illness did not facilitate, but impeded, his capacity to produce. For anyone who’s genuinely interested in art history and the psychology of art making, this is the substantial area for enquiry.

5) General grrrrrrr, re. the quality of art critical and art historical discussion on the telly. For this they expect me to pay a license fee?

It is highly upsetting that Apollo, which tries to sell itself as an international magazine, incarnates the British stereotypical, of being provincial-self-centered-and nationalistic . The same can be said about Mr. Paxman, who is a vulgar ” know-all” pundit. His series is pure amateurism and should not get the blessing (or even the attention) of a respectable magazine.
Does the Apollo give praise to every popular art documentary from the US? I think not. I don’t see the reason why it should act differently when it comes to shows from England. You want to be international- act as one.